> The cerebellum has a repeated, almost crystal-like neural structure:
As a software engineer who did neurosurgery residency, my intuition/guess is that the cerebellum is kind of like the FPGA of the brain.
The cerebrum is great for doing very complicated novel tasks, but it takes time and energy. The cerebellum on the other hand is specialized in being able to encode common tasks so it can do them with quickly and efficiently. A lot of our motor learning is in fact wiring the cerebellum correctly.
This can actually lead to an interesting amnesia, where a person can learn a skill (cerebellum) but not remember learning the skill (cerebrum). So you could end up with a person who would think that he had never seen a basketball hoop or basketball before but could be doing layups, dunks, and 3 pointers with ease.
As a software engineer who did neurosurgery residency, my intuition/guess is that the cerebellum is kind of like the FPGA of the brain.
The cerebrum is great for doing very complicated novel tasks, but it takes time and energy. The cerebellum on the other hand is specialized in being able to encode common tasks so it can do them with quickly and efficiently. A lot of our motor learning is in fact wiring the cerebellum correctly.
This can actually lead to an interesting amnesia, where a person can learn a skill (cerebellum) but not remember learning the skill (cerebrum). So you could end up with a person who would think that he had never seen a basketball hoop or basketball before but could be doing layups, dunks, and 3 pointers with ease.